I’m pleased to present the 395th edition of the VideoNuze podcast with my weekly partner Colin Dixon of nScreenMedia. Many thanks to Brightcove, this week’s podcast sponsor. Brightcove will be presenting insights on server-side ad insertion at our SHIFT Programmatic conference on Nov. 29th.

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division has reportedly put 2 unpalatable options in front of AT&T to gain approval for its proposed acquisition of Time Warner: divest Turner (including CNN) or divest DirecTV, which was only acquired 2 years ago.

On today’s podcast, Colin and I discuss how incongruous it feels for the government to assert AT&T will be gaining too much market power by acquiring Time Warner. To the contrary, Colin and I believe the market power of all incumbent media and telecom companies has dramatically decreased as big digital players like Google, Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Facebook, etc. have become leaders in advanced advertising and subscription business models.

Recognizing the massive disruptions, including accelerating cord-cutting, established providers are scrambling to reinvent themselves, with Disney’s decision to go direct to consumer with its most premium content the best example. We discuss how government limits on the ways established companies can reposition themselves for this era would be a major limitation.